Summary

This edited volume seeks to bring together scholars from across disciplines to discuss the social effects of technological mediation, focusing on the normative social dimensions effected by technological mediation of knowledge or the changing conceptions of humans and humanity effected by technological mediation of embodiment. A 500 word abstract is due by Oct. 6th 2014. If selected as a book chapter, then 3,000 to 4,000 words by March 2nd 2015. If selected as a journal article, then 4,000 to 5,000 words by March 2nd 2015. The edited book titled Social Epistemology and Technology: Toward Increasing Public Self-Awareness regarding Technological Mediation will be published by Rowman & Littlefield International as part of the Collective Studies in Knowledge and Society series. The articles will be published by the peer-reviewed online journal Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. The book and articles are expected to be published in July, 2015.

This Detailed Version is organized into the following three sections:

I. Description of the Project

II. Suggested Approaches

III. Design, Deadline & How to Submit a Proposal

I. Description of the Project

An amazing number of new social possibilities have emerged in the 21st century, and technology is a major condition for these possibilities. As part of the Collective Studies in Knowledge and Society series to be published by Rowman & Littlefield International, this is a “call for authors” for the volume titled Social Epistemology and Technology: Toward Increasing Public Self-Awareness regarding Technological Mediation. Because the project developed out of the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective (SERRC), this call for authors also involves the possibility of peer-reviewed publication through the SERRC online journal.

In other words, as one of the expressed goals of the book series is to “promote philosophy as a vital, necessary, public activity,” some papers will be accepted for publication in the book volume and some will be accepted for publication in the journal. The idea is then to place the publications into dialog via the online journal “review and reply collective.” Those papers selected for the journal will be encouraged to, at least, partially direct their work toward related content published in the book. This should facilitate collective discussion, since the authors of the book chapters will then have an opportunity to reply. Hereafter, then, “the project” refers to both the book and the journal publications.

“Public self-awareness” in the sub-title of the book points to the two objectives of the project. First, in regard to “analysing normative social dimensions” and “promoting philosophy” the project takes the discussion of issues related to technological mediation of knowledge as an objective. This includes:

(b) the role of technological mediation regarding the knowledge that co-constitutes, along with the persons themselves, a “human society”;

(c) the role of technological mediation regarding the generally accepted, however vaguely identified, meaning attributed to cities, buildings and spaces in relation to the persons understood as users of such information.

The second objective regards the theme of “exploring changing conceptions of humans and humanity.” For the purposes of the project this may be generally understood as related to issues of technologically augmented subjectivity or genetically, chemically, electronically, or mechanically altered human beings. This includes:

(d) insights gained through discussion of systems-oriented understandings of individuals, and social groups, as multi-voiced bodies;

(e) discussion of the “essence of technology” and “social engineering,” i.e. the role of technological mediation in the destiny of humanity;

(f) concern for the role of technological mediation in the determination of knowledge influencing humans and humanity. Though the technology of a cybernetic culture may increase efficiency and provideinsight into a cybernetic understanding of humanity, it falls to philosophers to discuss whether such “progress” or “enhancement” ultimately leads to a kind of diminished conception of humans and humanity and, thereby, a diminished lived-experience, e.g. a loss regarding agency, the dignity of the person, the sustainability of diversity, or depth in the meaning of embodied experience.

II. Suggested Approaches

Whereas the first objective directly addresses the relation between technology and social epistemology’s “fundamental question,” i.e. how should the pursuit of knowledge be organized, the second objective includes discussions regarding the social constitution of subjectivity.

Some questions which may be addressed include, but are not limited to:

1) What is the nature of technology’s impact on what it means to be human and to be a member of a human society?

2) What is the nature of technology’s impact on the meaning of cities, buildings, and spaces, and, thereby, our knowledge of those spaces and the activities we perform there?

3) How does a notion of “public interest” factor into technological mediation understood as both a product and an instrument of social power? I.e. how do the constraints of technological mediation relate to the possibility of “public self-awareness,” especially in the relation to information organized and disseminated for public consumption through technology?

4) How does the technology which allows for access to knowledge influence/limit the character of that knowledge? E.g. the sources of evidence used in making choices; the kinds of epistemic outcomes, purposes, or norms used in the evaluations.

5) How are we to understand the type of agent, or system, who makes knowledge-based choices or selections? E.g. whereas traditionally epistemology conceives of epistemic agents as individuals, the point of departure for social epistemology may best be characterized as “systems.” Of course social epistemology may also consider individuals; however, in doing so the individual is often understood as a constituent of, or participant in, multiple systems, and thereby may also be characterized as a system (cf. a multi-voiced body).

The project may include up to 40 publications (up to 20 to the book and up to 20 to the journal) to be written in a style conducive to discussion and public accessibility. This means the chapters of the book will be short, i.e. between 3,000 and 4,000 words including references, and the peer-reviewed online journal articles may be between 4,000 and 5,000 words including references. The exact design for the book chapter authors’ responses to journal authors is to be determined. That is, the responses may take the form of “reply comments” on the SERRC website, or in the case of a SERRC online journal published short “critical reply” the word length will be 2,000 to 3,000 words.

To be considered for inclusion in the project, please submit an abstract of approximately 500 words explaining the nature of your proposed contribution and its relation to the above social epistemology-related objectives of the project. The deadline for consideration in the project is October 6th 2014, 8:00am (Central Time Zone).

You will receive confirmation upon receipt of your submission, and the final decision regarding which authors will be included in the project will be made by November 3rd 2014. After Nov. 3rd authors selected for the journal will receive the relevant anonymous abstracts from book chapter authors. All authors will then have four (4) months to submit a first draft. Including the subsequent editing requests and resubmit process, final drafts should be submitted no later than July 15th 2015. The publication of the journal articles will coincide with the publication of the book, at which time the reply process will be determined.

Re-Making Normal: Governing the Social in Neoliberal Times is a ‘sequel’ to my sole edited (Nelson 2003) publication, Making Normal: Social Regulation in Canada. However, it differs from the 2003 edition in a number of respects, most notably, it will be published by a scholarly press rather than a commercial press, it can serve as a reader for upper year undergraduate courses and some graduate courses (although it is not intended to be a textbook), and it will be comprised entirely of chapters on contemporary concerns, forgoing the historical content of the earlier book.

Re-Making Normal explores how we are constituted as neoliberal subjects; for example, as sexually, fiscally and organizationally responsible subjects, and as biopolitical subjects of citizenship, militarism, development aid, etc. In keeping with a governmentality approach, how focused investigations will be foregrounded. In this text, neoliberalism is understood as more than an ideological perspective favoring the notion of the minimal state, competitive individualism, and ‘free’ trade and markets. Neoliberalism has fundamentally reshaped how the self can be known and what interests the self holds through a reconfiguration of subjectification.

Re-Making Normal will potentially include a range of topics from self-fashioning (such as how we come to know and represent ourselves as sexual subjects, as psy subjects constituted through therapeutic authority, as having a particular kind of character, and of what ‘truths’ we speak) to broader biopolitical processes (such as schooling, surveillance, the organization of public and domestic spaces, the “management of the mind”[1], consumption, and how we labour). All relevant topics will be considered.

All contributions must engage directly with activities of neoliberal governance as materially grounded and empirically verifiable sets of practices. As such, Michel Foucault’s work provides a foundation for the book, and all contributions must engage directly with his governmentality approach. I welcome contributions that use, challenge, and extend governmentality studies. In this text, the governmentality approach is broadly conceived and open to a range of potentialities, in keeping with the fact that governmentality is not a specific theory and not a school of thought. However contributions should, where possible, directly address the following:

-Take an approach to power that is much more nuanced than a social control model, and considers the ways in which contemporary western societies are characterized by conditions of ‘regulated freedom’.[2]

-Engage with the ‘programmes, strategies and techniques’[3] of government.

-De-centre the state and instead demonstrate how the state is produced as an affect of multiple force relations.

-Connect everyday life to the big issues of our day, centering the political character of personal, social, cultural and economic activity.

-Capture tensions between normalization and individualization, and homogenization and diversification, noting how they are integral to contemporary forms of governance.

-Demonstrate the dynamic and mutually constitutive relation between power and knowledge.

-Take up a critique of concepts such as ‘choice’, ‘freedom’, ‘empowerment’, ‘human rights’, etc.

-Pose the possibilities of resistance, beginning with an interrogation of truth, power and subjectivity.[4]

All contributions will pose critical analytic questions, directions for further research, and suggestions for resistance tactics and strategies.

Chapters may contain an historical component, but not be primarily historical. While the text will be primarily Canadian in focus, international foci are most welcome (my preference is for non- US focused contributions), particularly where they contribute to a ‘global governmentality’.[5]

Chapter length: In order to accommodate as broad a range of issues as possible, this book will feature relatively short chapters. Chapters can range from a minimum of 3,780 words including references (approximately 9 published pages) to 7,560 words including references (approximately 18 published pages).

Without compromising scholarly rigor, I invite contributors to write in the first person (the ‘I’ form), to use plentiful examples, accessible language, and to be personable and somewhat colloquial in style.

Chapters will be selected based on their ability to meet the objectives of the collection, their coherence with other chapters in the collection, and overall quality. All contributions must be new original articles for this edition.

Format: Chicago Manual of Style

Schedule:

31 March 2014 Last day for receipt of indication of interest in participation

Deborah Brock is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada. Her research and teaching address social, moral, and sexual regulation. Her publications include Criminalization, Representation, Regulation (co-edited with Amanda Glasbeek and Carmela Murdocca) University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2014; Power and Everyday Practices (co-edited with Rebecca Raby and Mark Thomas) Nelson, 2011; Making Work, Making Trouble: The Social Regulation of Sexual Labour University of Toronto Press, 2009, 1998; and Making Normal: Social Regulation in Canada Nelson, 2003.

[1] Nikolas Rose Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

[2] Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller “Introduction: Governing Economic and Social Life” in Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).

EDITORIAL TEAM

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

We seek contributions for an edited book of empirical studies that illustrate new perspectives on governmentality from the point of view of discourse studies.

Studies of governmentality inspired by Foucault’s lectures and writings have slowly accumulated a body of work across a number of disciplines, including political science, policy studies, economics and history (Dean 2010, Miller & Rose 2008, Rose 1999). As a result of the recent publication in English for the first time of some of Foucault’s annual lecture series at the Collège De France from 1977-1984 (Foucault 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), recent debates on governmentality attempt to critically rethink Foucault’s ideas, both in relation to new areas of application (e.g. climate change, health, mobility and transnationality) and in relation to developing new theories and methods appropriate to tracking the transformations in governance, self, control, power, democracy, body, conduct, space, security, environment and citizenship taking place in contemporary societies and polities across the world (Binkley & Capetillo 2009, Bröckling et al. 2011, Nadesan 2008, Walters 2012).

It is becoming apparent that the concept of governmentality has overgrown its status as a minor element of the Foucauldian heritage and has become an interdisciplinary inquiry in its own right. However, while the body of work on governmentality crosses multiple disciplinary boundaries, it is held together by a common tendency to constantly return to Foucault’s works as a sort of ‘final destination’ for those theorising the conduct of conduct. It is in response to this inclination to treat governmentality as a set of arguments, as a social and political theory which can only be understood and articulated through a re-reading of Foucault’s references to governmentality, that some scholars are proposing that a productive direction lies in viewing governmentality as a set of analytical tools rather than a theory per se, and in producing new writings of today’s governmentality rather than new readings of it (Walters 2012). This entails that studies of new territories of power and new ’technes’ of governance should be, first and foremost, empirical and analytical examinations of the ways that the rationalities and apparatus of governmentality are at work both at the level of everyday practices, rather than just institutions of governance (Lemke 2007), and through assemblages of materialities, social arrangements, discursivities and textualities, rather than through the distinct and segregated realms of the technological and ideational (Latour 2005).

Within discourse studies, there have been only a few attempts to connect up the notion of discourse and the later work of Foucault and even fewer have attempted to connect discourse and governmentality. In the broader domain of discourse studies, a number of scholars from different fields have touched upon or pointed towards the potential of Foucault’s work. Most notably, McHoul (1986, 1996) has suggested an ethnogenealogy, Laurier & Philo (2004) have proposed an ethnoarchaeology,and Iedema (2003) has done governmentality-inspired work on discourses of post-bureaucratic organisation, but others should be mentioned as well, namely Anderson (2003), Bührmann et al. (2007), Diaz-Bone et al. (2007), Fairclough (1993, 1996, 2003), Hearn (2008), Hodges (2002, 2003), Iedema & Scheeres (2003), Miller (1997), Powers (2007), Prior (1997), Ransom (1994), Salskov-Iversen et al. (2000, 2008), Tate (2007) and Wickham & Kendall (2007). However, whereas all of these studies, to varying degrees, are concerned with the relationship between the conception of discourse and Foucault’s thought, none of them in any detail discusses and demonstrates the methodological and analytical consequences of the confluence of discourse studies with studies of governmentality, and, as a consequence, there is still an important gap to be filled if discourse studies are to take full advantage of the opportunities of current and future work within studies of governmentality.

TOPICS

Contributions to the book are expected to centre on the ‘intersection’ of discourse and governmentality. Other phenomena identified with Foucault’s later work, e.g. biopolitics, securitisation, technologies of the self, etc. are also welcomed. Contributions may focus on a broad range of areas, including but not limited to health, sport and leisure, the environment, education and schooling, family, mass media, new media, international politics, transnationality, migration, non-governmental organisations, transportation, mobilities, and social movements. Further, they could engage with the following important issues:

Governmentalities beyond the national. For example, the discursive strategies, technologies and routines by which the conduct of an individual is increasingly governed across and beyond national territories.

Governmentalities outside advanced liberalism. For example, anti-politics and non-governmental politics, or studies in countries or regions in the Global South.

Various forms of resistance, protest or counter-conduct within current forms of advanced liberalism. This could include, for example, the Occupy-movement, protests in the Middle East, and studies of children who renegotiate the rules set up by caregivers or teachers.

Various forms of securitisation within current forms of advanced liberalism.

Relationships between different technologies (techne) and rationalities (episteme) of government (or, in other words, of regimes of practices). For example, forms of multimodal analysis of different practices and their rationalities – for instance, of the regime of automobility in everyday practices.

Relationships between the attempt to conduct the conduct of others and the attempt to conduct the conduct of oneself. For instance, the accomplishment of governmentalities at the intersection of politicians and citizens.

The role of computer-mediated technologies, communication infrastructures and digital media – for example, social media and individual/collective resistance to the attempts to regulate the actors’ conduct, or the new arts of governmentality (securitization, transnational governmentality, ethnification, etc.) that employ internet and digital technologies.

CHAPTER CONTRIBUTIONS

Given our concern with interdisciplinarity, we are looking forward to contributions that satisfy the following criteria:

Contributions must engage with Foucault’s work on governmentality and the studies of governmentality that have emerged in fields such as international studies, environmental studies, political science, public policy and organisation studies.

Contributions should engage with issues of scale and the interconnectedness of, on the one hand, the rationalities, technologies, programmes and materialities of governmentality and, on the other, the textualities, interactionalities and discursivities that circulate in practices of the conduct of conduct.

Contributions may present a new or invigorated perspective on governmentality or go beyond established governmentality debates.

Contributions may show how the conceptual innovations of intellectual thought and the subtleties of thinking about governmentality (eg. genealogy, historical ontology, powers of freedom, etc.) have an impact on the development of innovative approaches in discourse studies.

Potential authors are invited to submit a title and extended abstract (no more than 750 words) by April 15th 2013 to <discgov[AT]lists.hum.aau.dk>. Please also send a brief bio statement.

The proposals should outline their perspective on Foucault and governmentality, the methodology used, the nature and extent of the empirical data, and preliminary explanations of interests, phenomena, analytic directions, and possible value and implications (see advice above).

The co-editors will decide on a selection of abstracts and invite those authors to submit a full paper (8-10 000 words) for consideration to be included in the collection. The full papers will be peer reviewed and revised before submission of a draft volume to the publisher. Further revisions may be necessary in order to secure acceptance by the publisher.

It is planned that after submission of the full paper, authors will be invited to a seminar in Autumn 2013 dedicated to presentations, sharing data and improving the coherence and quality of the volume. Funding for the local arrangements and accommodation are being pursued.

Any enquires can be addressed to the co-editors at the address: <discgov[AT]lists.hum.aau.dk>.

Abstract (750 words): 15th April 2013

Full paper (8-10 000 words): 1st September 2013

Revised paper: 1st January 2014

Submission of manuscript to publisher: 1st March 2014

Publication date: late 2014/early 2015

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Potential authors are invited to submit a title and extended abstract (no more than 750 words) by April 15th 2013 to <discgov[AT]lists.hum.aau.dk>. Please also send a brief bio statement.

The proposals should outline their perspective on Foucault and governmentality, the methodology used, the nature and extent of the empirical data, and preliminary explanations of interests, phenomena, analytic directions, and possible value and implications (see advice above).

The co-editors will decide on a selection of abstracts and invite those authors to submit a full paper (8-10 000 words) for consideration to be included in the collection. The full papers will be peer reviewed and revised before submission of a draft volume to the publisher. Further revisions may be necessary in order to secure acceptance by the publisher.

It is planned that after submission of the full paper, authors will be invited to a seminar in Autumn 2013 dedicated to presentations, sharing data and improving the coherence and quality of the volume. Funding for the local arrangements and accommodation are being pursued.

Any enquires can be addressed to the co-editors at the address: <discgov[AT]lists.hum.aau.dk>.

Ransom, Janet (1994). Feminism, Difference and Discourse: The Limits of Discursive Analysis for Feminism. In Ramazanoglu, Caroline (Ed.), Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions between Foucault and Feminism, London: Routledge.

Salskov-Iversen, Dorte, Hansen, Hans Krause & Bislev, Sven (2008). The Governmentality of Globalizing Managerial Discourses. The Case of New Public Management in Local Government Practices. In Chakrabarty, Bidyut & Bhattaccharya, Mohit (Eds.), The Governance Discourse. A Reader, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

CFP: Expanded Second Edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability

Submission deadline: Saturday, June 30 2012

The University of Michigan Press considers Foucault and the Government of Disability to be a “classic” in Disability Studies and the book continues to sell well. For these reasons, the U of M Press is publishing an updated and expanded second edition of the book to mark the ten-year anniversary (in 2015) of the first edition’s publication in 2005. The new edition will include a new introduction by me, some new chapters, and an updated index.

Thus, I am seeking proposals for the new chapters of the book. These proposals can be brief (approximately 200-300 words), but should provide evidence of significant familiarity with and relevance to Foucault’s work. I wish to avoid replication of topics and themes treated in the first edition. Furthermore, I am especially interested in proposals that will fill gaps in the first edition of the book and/or indicate newer or more recent concentrations within Disability Studies that are influenced by Foucault’s approach such as: sexuality and disability, globalization and disability, disability and racism/neo-colonialism, autism, philosophy and disability, media and disability, ethics and disability, bioethics and disability, performance (to name only a few). In short, you should only submit a proposal if your chosen topic is not already covered in the first edition of the book, or if your proposal adds new dimensions to a topic treated in the first edition.

Given that only a few slots are available for the second edition, and given the attention this book is likely to get, competition for inclusion in the second edition will be very high; however, that shouldn’t be taken as discouragement or as code to suggest that the most prominent writers in the field will be given priority. Once I have reviewed the proposals submitted, I will ask a select number of authors to provide me with chapter-length samples of their work on disability and Foucault. From these submissions, I will in turn select authors to write for the book.

If you would like your work to be considered for this exciting second edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability, please send a brief preliminary proposal to Shelley Tremain at s.tremain@yahoo.ca by June 30 2012 or sooner.

Like this:

The ideas of these two towering thinkers of the 20th century, Gramsci and Foucault, have all too often fallen into opposing camps. Radhakrishnan (1987) argues that Foucault’s understanding of the subject remains philosophical, while Gramsci’s continual interrogation of the relation between the individual and the group allows for concrete political theory and action. Richard Day’s “Gramsci is Dead” (2005) meanwhile attacks the whole notion of hegemony from a Foucauldian perspective. Scott Lash (2007) argues that ‘power over’, in contemporary society, has become post-­‐hegemonic, suggesting a more Foucauldian conception of ‘power from within.’ The noted neo-­Gramscian Stephen Gill (Griffiths 2009), meanwhile, has drawn substantially on Foucauldian notions of panopticism to develop his new concepts of disciplinary neo-­liberalism.

Are these two thinkers really as opposed as a simplistic humanist/antihumanist comparison might suggest, i.e. “the imprisoned leader of the Italian communist party and the anticommunist campaigner for reform of the penal system” (Ekers and Loftus 2008). Is it, as Barnett would have it, that “marxist and Foucauldian approaches “imply different models of the nature of explanatory concepts; different models of causality and determination; different models of social relations and agency; and different normative understandings of political power” (Barnett, 2005:8). Or is it merely that the two thinkers focused upon differing aspects of a wider picture that do not exclude each other: does Foucault’s concentration upon the micropolitics in society that adds up to and constitutes the central figure of the State undermine and discount, or complement and mirror Gramsci’s concentration on the hegemonic reach of that centre out into the minutiae of social relations?

This book sets out to deliberate in detail some of the issues, linkages, dissonances, and potential harmonies between the work of these two great thinkers, in search of tools of socio-­‐political and critical analysis for the 21st century. Contexts as various as human geography, online social networking, political economy, critical theory and beyond are welcomed for a rich and lively collection.

Abstracts are invited from all interested parties towards a full proposal to Ashgate Publishing who are interested in this book. Subject to successful review, full chapters will be expected by 30th September 2012, with a view to publication by Ashgate Publishing in 2013.

Important Dates
=============

Deadline for Abstracts : 31st December 2011

Deadline for Full chapters : 30th September 2012 Publication: 2013.

Abstracts
Potential authors should send their abstracts to Dr David Kreps d.g.kreps@salford.ac.uk with a clear indication of which part of the book their abstract is aimed at, and a brief personal biog. Following review chapters will then be invited from those whose abstracts most closely coalesce into an interesting book.

«I’m not a professional historian, but nobody is perfect» Michel Foucault, University of Vermont, 27 October 1982

Just like gender, race and class, disability has become a standard analytical category in the historian’s tool chest nowadays. Up until now Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky’s book The New disability history: American perspectives (2001) still provides the most thoughtful introduction to the burgeoning field. If Longmore and Umansky’s American perspectives have proved to be crucial in the promotion of disability history as a well-established historical field of study it, at the same time, led to a kind of methodological determination based on the social-constructivist approach of history and closely connected to the on-going emancipatory processes of persons with disabilities all over the world. With this call for papers we would like to invite disability scholars working within or on a European context to explore new possible ways of relating the intellectual craft of disability history to the political ideals of emancipation and liberation of persons with disabilities. We especially would like to encourage disability scholars to make use of post-modernist philosophies and theories of history in order to deal with the problematic feature of ‘identity’ in current disability theory.

Inspired by the American perspectives of Longmore and Umansky many disability historians up until now have written disability histories in order to underpin the positivist construction of sovereign, independent emancipated identities for persons with disabilities with historical evidence. Despite the undeniable importance of the concept of ‘identity’ for the social model of disability, it has been argued that in our neo-liberal societies, “power” cannot solely be seen outside or in contrast to identity. Emancipatory processes solely focusing on identity, it is argued, fail to grasp the fact that identity in our neo-liberal societies is placed at the core of power technologies resulting in governable subjectivities. In other words: who we are and what we want to be is now one of the many elements used in strategies to determine how we behave ourselves in the world. Given this contemporary suspicion towards the concept of ‘identity’ we would like to encourage scholars to explore to what extent post-modernist philosophies and theories of history might suggest a way of writing disability histories beyond social-constructivism. Without having the intention of being exhaustive we would like to suggest two possible roads.

First of all it seems attractive to refer to the wide-ranging ideas and insights developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his thought-provoking oeuvre. If disability historians have, of course, already explored some of Foucault’s ideas in the context of social-constructivists inspired histories it seems that some of Foucault’s later concepts – like governmentality, limit-experiences and Art of life – might enable the disability historian to get rid of the problematic features attached to ‘identity’ without letting go the imperative of social change. With regard to the gay movement, for example, Foucault has argued in at least one interview that it was more important to find out new ways to be gay than to define a gay identity. Based on this relatively unknown Foucauldian perspective in disability circles, disability histories then could try to reconstruct the many possible and sometimes conflicting ways of being that have been explored by persons with disabilities throughout history.

Secondly, we would like to refer to some refreshing meta-historical theories that all, in one way or another, have stressed the fact that also history is a construct and that historians often write narratives in order to prove personal opinions and by using problematic methodologies. It is argued that many historians up until now have used a simplified concept of time – focusing on natural evolution and logical chronologies. While emphasizing the necessity of writing histories that deal with experiences of exclusion and the relationship between power and diversity, authors operating from this new meta-historical perspective have abandoned the representation of history as something which continuously becomes better. Authors like Haydn White, Jörn Rüsen, Walter Benjamin or Reinhardt Kosselleck have argued against this progressive model of history while at the same time underlining the importance of social change. Just like the ideas of Michel Foucault these authors can offer disability historians fruitful pathways that go beyond the social-constructivists histories of disability ‘identity’ and explore new ways in which disability histories can be written.

Generally speaking we would like to encourage disability scholars to submit contributions that explore divergent terrains of disability history, not as much as to stress the existence and importance of disabled identities, but rather to formulate a critique of “normalcy” and to reveal the manifold and often conflicting ways of being disabled in history. One could say that the central motif of this book is the de-construction of borders. Hereby we explicitly aim at enlarging the methodological toolkit of the disability historian by using narrative methods and discourse analysis. As we personally believe that no single history can claim to be perfect or once and for all can reconstruct the past in the light of a better future we would like to provocatively title this collection The imperfect historian.

Based on a notorious statement made by Michel Foucault at the beginning of the 80s, our main intention is to seek possible ways of applying disturbing philosophical and historical theories to the methodology of disability history in order to show that imperfection might be a fruitful perspective for disability historians – just like it is for persons with disabilities.

Anyone interested in this call for papers should electronically send an abstract of no more than 500 words and a brief CV to Sebastian Barsch: s.barsch@uni-koeln.de. The deadline for the abstracts is March 31, 2011. All of the abstracts will be reviewed by the editors of the book proposal: Dr. Sebastian Barsch, Dr. Anne Klein and Dr. Pieter Verstraete. Participants will be notified towards the end of April 2011 whether their abstract is accepted.
The deadline for a first draft of the full article then will be September 30, 2011.

Drawing from Foucault’s notion of the ‘political technology of the body’ and the ‘spectacle of the scaffold’, the collection looks to explore sovereign power and control over the body through a consideration of the cinema’s, arguable, co-option of the state’s political-military-corporate aims and goals.

Following a strong response to the initial call for abstracts, including those from significant academics, I am now specifically seeking abstracts/papers on: